Dinder National Park is a national park and

biosphere reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

in eastern Sudan, and is connected to

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

's Alitash National Park.

Location

Dinder lies approximately southeast of

Khartoum Khartoum or Khartum ( ; ar, الخرطوم, Al-Khurṭūm, din, Kaartuɔ̈m) is the capital of Sudan. With a population of 5,274,321, its metropolitan area is the largest in Sudan. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing n ...

, on either side of the

Dinder River The Dinder River ( ar, نهر الدندر Nahr-ud-dindir, also spelled Dindar; ) is a tributary of the Blue Nile. It flows through Ethiopia and Sudan for . Course The Dinder River rises in the Ethiopian Highlands, west of Lake Tana in the Ethio ...

bounded to the north by the

Rahad River The Rahad is a river whose sources are in Ethiopia, where it is called Shinfa, and a tributary of the Abay (Blue Nile) on the right side. The river has its origins in the Ethiopian Highlands (west of Lake Tana), from where it flows into eastern ...

. The town of

Dinder Dinder (which means "the house in the valley") is a small village 2½ miles west of Shepton Mallet, and 2 miles east of Wells in Somerset. It falls within the civil parish of St Cuthbert Out and the Mendip district. The river Sheppey runs ...

( northwest) acts as a gateway for tourists wishing to enter the Park.

History

The area of Dinder was heavily populated when it was first visited by Europeans in 1861. In the 1880s, at the time of the Mahdist War and a famine, the human population vanished. Alfred Harrison found only traces of human habitation in 1925. Dinder was established as a park in 1935 following the London Convention of 1933 and designated in 1979 as a member of the

World Network of Biosphere Reserves The UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) covers internationally designated protected areas, known as biosphere reserves, which are meant to demonstrate a balanced relationship between people and nature (e.g. encourage sustainable de ...

. In 1983 the park was extended towards the west.

Ecology

Dinder National Park is ecologically significant because it falls on the

ecotone An ecotone is a transition area between two biological communities, where two communities meet and integrate. It may be narrow or wide, and it may be local (the zone between a field and forest) or regional (the transition between forest and gras ...

between the Sahel and

Ethiopian Highlands The Ethiopian Highlands is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below , while the summits reach heights of up to . ...

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...

s. It contains three distinct ecosystems: * riverine -

riparian zone A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks a ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

*''maya'' ( oxbow lake). The park is home to 27

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of large mammals such as leopard,

cheetah The cheetah (''Acinonyx jubatus'') is a large cat native to Africa and central Iran. It is the fastest land animal, estimated to be capable of running at with the fastest reliably recorded speeds being , and as such has evolved specialized ...

, more than 160 bird species, 32 fish species, and small mammals, bats, reptiles, and amphibians. It is in a major

flyway A flyway is a flight path used by large numbers of birds while migrating between their breeding grounds and their overwintering quarters. Flyways generally span continents and often pass over oceans. Although applying to any species of migrat ...

used by birds migrating between Eurasia and Africa. There are many

North African ostrich The North African ostrich, red-necked ostrich, or Barbary ostrich (''Struthio camelus camelus'') is the nominate subspecies of the common ostrich from West and North Africa. It is the largest subspecies, making it the largest living bird. Evolu ...

es residing in the national park as well. Dinder National Park hosts a healthy population of lions.

Threats

The ecology of the park is threatened by encroachment from cattle herders who are being displaced from their traditional grazing lands by the expansion of crop agriculture, through the fundamental cause of expanding regional population. Populations of migrant grazers, including tiang, Roan, waterbuck and reebuck, are under additional pressure as land outside the park that they migrate across has been converted to farmland. Game counts between 1971 and 2001 have shown a precipitous decline in most large mammal species, with the population of waterbuck falling by 85%, reedbuck by 72%, and oribi by 68%. Other species have been extirpated in Dinder since was gazetted, including African bush elephant,

black rhinoceros The black rhinoceros, black rhino or hook-lipped rhinoceros (''Diceros bicornis'') is a species of rhinoceros, native to eastern and southern Africa including Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania ...

hippopotamus The hippopotamus ( ; : hippopotamuses or hippopotami; ''Hippopotamus amphibius''), also called the hippo, common hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extan ...

tora hartebeest The tora hartebeest, or simply tora (''Alcelaphus buselaphus tora''), is an extremely endangered antelope, native to Eritrea and Ethiopia. It has possibly been extirpated Local extinction, also known as extirpation, refers to a species (or ot ...

, Nubian giraffe,

Soemmerring's gazelle Soemmerring's gazelle (''Nanger soemmerringii''), also known as the Abyssinian mohr, is a gazelle species native to the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan). The species was described and given its binomen by ...

, and the

Nile crocodile The Nile crocodile (''Crocodylus niloticus'') is a large crocodilian native to freshwater habitats in Africa, where it is present in 26 countries. It is widely distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, occurring mostly in the central, eastern, ...

. Dinder National Park has been a habitat for the

painted hunting dog The African wild dog (''Lycaon pictus''), also called the painted dog or Cape hunting dog, is a wild canine which is a native species to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest wild canine in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus '' Lyca ...

(''Lycaon pictus''), but this endangered canid declined in this region.C. Michael Hogan. 2009
"Painted Hunting Dog: ''Lycaon pictus''", GlobalTwitcher.com, ed. N. Stromberg

References

External links

Adil Mohamed Ali and Mutasim Bashir Nimir, "Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in the Dinder National Park (Biosphere Reserve)", Fifth World Parks Conference, 2003; includes maps.Images of lions and antelopes at Dinder National Park (www.overlandinthesun.com)

Encyclopædia Britannica entry

''Lycaon pictus'' - the Painted Hunting Dog
{{authority control National parks of Sudan Biosphere reserves of Sudan Protected areas established in 1935 Ramsar sites in Sudan